Monday, October 24, 2016

The Chadron Airport, long an invaluable asset
to the community, wasn’t something that magically appeared. Through the years,
it has grown a lot like Topsy: One step at a time, certainly without a
master plan or a big-time government grant, at least initially.

The threat of war, then World War II, were
major inspirations. The desire of numerous adventurous men and several
women who wanted to learn to be pilots was another mainspring in its early
development. The fact that Chadron had a college with dormitory space and
food services also was a plus in the whole scenario.

There apparently were two primary instigators
in getting the airport “off the ground.” One was Arden Hixson, a native
of Crookston and a Chadron State College student who later became the “poster
child” for the program that was the inspiration for the airport. The other was
Frank Snook, one of the area’s first pilots who was using his small plane
primarily to hunt coyotes while flying out of an “airport” he had developed at
Crawford.

Early Dawes County pilot Frank Snook

Maybe Snook was unintentionally involved in
the airport project first. In a story printed in the Chadron Record in
September 1990, he told Goldie Dawkins that in 1938 “a government official”
hunted him down in Crawford and asked him to move to Lawrence, Kansas, to become
an instructor for a pilot training program that the University of Kansas was
planning. The official explained that if the United States became
involved in the war that seemed imminent many pilots would be needed.

“I told him I didn’t want to move and
suggested that Chadron had a college,” Snook is quoted as saying in the
story. “He reminded me that Chadron didn’t have an airport, but I told
him I knew the mayor and some of the council members, and perhaps something
could be done about that.”

At the time, planes flying into Chadron landed
at what was later known as “the Ormesher airport” east of the Dawes County
Fairgrounds. Maybe it could be expanded, but the owner of the land wanted
$6 an acre for it and that was deemed to be too much, Snook told Dawkins.

Before long, Snook said the city rented or
bought a quarter section west of Chadron where the airport developed. The
land met one requirement. It was flat. But it was covered with cactuses
and getting it shaped up took some doing.

Hixson entered the picture about the same
time. According to a letter he wrote for his 50-year reunion of the Class
of 1940 at Chadron State, in the summer of 1939 he learned about a government
plan to teach college students to fly. Hixson said he “had always” wanted to
become a pilot and approached Robert Elliott, president of the college, and
E.L. Rouse, director of instruction, about the possibilities of CSC becoming
involved.

According to Hixson’s letter, published in
Chadron’s Golden Age Courier in December 1970 along with a story written by
Belle Lecher, the college officials initially weren’t very encouraging, but
said they would consider it. They noted Chadron didn’t have an airport
and they didn’t know anything about aviation.

Arden Hixson - Chadron Normal 1940

Hixson’s letter says he mentioned to Elliott
and Rouse that Snook was hunting coyotes with his plane at Crawford and the
college had capable faculty members who could be trained to help with the
program.

Lecher’s story states Heman Carmean, the
Chadron mayor in 1939, was supportive of the airport notion and when Hixson went
to the city council it agreed to help.

Things moved fast. By October 1939,
Chadron State was on the list of 55 colleges in the nation that had been
approved by the Civilian Aeronautics Authority for participation in a civilian
pilot training program. The initial quota of students to take the training was
10, one of which could be a woman. That would be Hope Brooker
Anderson. Hixson was one of the men.

The stories by both Dawkins and Lecher discuss
the problem of removing the cactuses so a runway could be developed. The
would-be aviators initially used hoes, rakes, shovels, etc., to cut them off or
dig them up. Before long, a county commissioner, probably Ward Diehl,
came to their rescue and saw to it that a county road grader was made
available.

Snook initially taught both the “ground
school” and flight instruction, but before long Chadron State physics professor
E.T. (Tripp) Michael went to Minnesota for special training offered by the Navy
and he took over the ground school training. Other CSC faculty members
such as Lyle Andrews, who taught weather, and Ross Armstrong, who taught
physical fitness and code, became involved.

About the time Hixson was graduating from
Chadron State in May 1940, he was a winner of ground school competition
sponsored by Shell Oil Co., involving 10,000 flight school students. He became
Nebraska’s representative for seven-state competition in St. Louis.

The contest involved flight maneuvers needed
to complete the Civilian Pilot Training (CPT) course and earn a private pilot license. Hixson also won
that and went on to Washington, D.C., for more competition against the winners
from the remaining six regions.

Hixson, in his letter in the Golden Age
Courier, said he received a solid gold wrist watch as the regional winner and
was a guest of honor at a banquet attended by more than 200 aviation notables.
By the end of 1940, Hixson also had both instructor and commercial licenses and
was being paid $5 a hour to teach flight in Wichita. He eventually was the
flight commander at Homestead Flight Center in Florida, a pilot for Delta
Airlines, an inspector for the CAA and spent the remainder of his career
monitoring and evaluating flight programs, including those in a half dozen
South American countries.

Altogether he had 31 years of federal service
relating to flight.

The 1941 Chadron State yearbook said since the
inception of the Civilian Pilot Training program 70 students had received
private pilot certification, 20 of whom had continued their training with the
Army, Navy, U.S. Aviation Meteorology or airline training schools. It
also reported that the Chadron Municipal Airport had expanded rapidly to
include 450 acres, an intermediate airline field that was government lighted
and marked, hangar and shop space and a “modern fireproof Administration
Building.”

The bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941,
turned Chadron’s Civilian Pilot Training Program into something much
larger. It soon became a part of the military effort with officers coming
to help fine tune the operation.

A photo in the Omaha World-Herald in June 1942
shows about 90 men standing on the front steps of Crites Hall. The caption
says, “Commanded by Lt. Commander William E. Johnson, former lieutenant
governor of Nebraska, a full quota of cadets are now training at the aviation
station at Chadron State Teachers’ College.” All 90 were then
identified.

Snook remained in charge of the flight
program. He told Dawkins the government purchased private planes for the
training. He checked them out and accepted 34, but rejected others. He
also had 40 employees. Among them was Donald Putnam, a native of the Edgemont
area and later an Oelrichs rancher. He was the program’s chief pilot in
charge of the training.

Long-time Chadron resident Gus Yeradi was
among the mechanics.

Before long, cadets from all over the U.S.
were arriving for three months of what was called pre-flight training. They
arrived, usually 30 at a time, via the Chicago and North Western Railroad, were
greeted by townspeople and marched up Main Street to the college, where they
ate, slept and took the ground school training. After their stay in Chadron,
they went on for what was sometimes called “combat training.”

Armstrong related years later that, because
the fledgling pilots needed as much daylight as possible for their training in
the air, he rousted them out of bed at 4 a.m. for physical fitness and
taught them code in the evenings.

The program is often credited with keeping the
college open. The enrollment in the fall of 1943 was just 95. By
then, nearly all the able-bodied men in the nation were wearing a military
uniform.

Thankfully, there were never any major
accidents or injuries during the nearly four years that the Chadron program
existed. It ended in 1944 when the Navy built larger facilities to train
pilots at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma and the programs on numerous
college campuses were shut down.

At least four men who received their preflight
training through the Chadron program lost their lives while serving as pilots
during World War II. They were Melvin Butler, Lee Coleman, Earl Finkey
and Francis Wertz.

Not all of those trained locally became
military pilots, but were aviators the rest of their lives. An example is
Clayton Feldhausen, a 1938 graduate of Chadron High School. While he was
attending Chadron State, he was among the early enrollees in the pilot’s
program, went on for advanced instruction and instrument rating

According to Betty Reading of Chadron,
Feldhausen’s sister, he did not weigh enough to serve as a military pilot, but
he returned to help with the pilot training here. He later became an air
traffic controller, a corporate pilot and an FAA inspector in Denver and for the entire state of South Dakota.Reading says her brother took his job
seriously. While visiting her in Chadron, he observed a small plane flying
below the altitude limit over a congested area. When the plane landed, he
met it and cited the pilot for his actions.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Editor's Note: Thanks to Con Marshall for sharing this story. To see these and more photographs relating to local history, visit our Early Chadron Photo Gallery.

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

First, a disclaimer. These cheery guys aren't from Dawes County. Well, some of them may have lived in Dawes County around the turn of the 20th century, but these fellows played baseball for the team from Beaver Valley east of Chadron. Yep, in Sheridan County. But the Chadron team just had to be a favorite opponent!

We're told that this team routinely whopped the Chadron dudes. Suppose we could do some fact-checking on that, but we like the idea that they beat the city slickers. You'd think that Chadron would have consistently triumphed over these fellows. But I'll bet they didn't beat Whitney!

If you're curious to know who this group of ballplayers from yesteryear were, check 'em out in our Baseball Gallery. A larger resolution photo and name key can be found there, along with a few other old baseball photos. Thanks to Lawrence Denton for sharing this bit of history.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

The latest edition of Chadron's Golden Age Courier, edited by Ron Wineteer, shares details about the forthcoming History In Action celebration on Sunday, September 25, at the Dawes County Museum three miles south of Chadron.

An early but beautiful September morning at the Dawes County Museum

"History In Action Day began in 1996," writes museum Executive Director Phyllis Carlson, "in order to provide Dawes County historical attention to our county and give a welcoming Thank You to our visiting public."

Admission to the event is free, but donations to the society, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, are tax deductible and go a long way in helping grow and maintain the museum.

Among the new additions to the museum: the Marcus Cain Collection of Farm Implements, which is housed in a new building on the property.

There'll be a wide range of activities at the 2016 History in Action. They include corn shelling, carriage and antique cars, butter making, leather work, apple cider making, horse shoe tossing, a hymn sing, and much more.

Among the demonstrations will be a Civil War cannon, ferrier, quilting, tatting, live music, wheat ground into flour, a primitive camp, spinning and weaving.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

There’s a good reason why
he remembers one of his birthdays more than the others. He turned 25 on
Aug. 6, 1945, the day the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima,
helping end World War II.

Carnahan was aboard the
USS Stormes, a Navy destroyer with radar capabilities that was anchored in the
Pacific only a hundred miles or so south of the Japan.

“Sure I remember it,”
said Jack, a Chadron resident who has spent his entire life in Sioux or Dawes counties
except for the two years he was in the Navy.

“We were in a radar
picket line; that’s that they called it,” he said. “There were probably at least
a dozen other ships there, too. Our home base was Okinawa. We were on
Japan’s door step. We’d been there for 77 days and they (the Japanese) bombed
us every night. It was wicked.

Sailor Jack Carnahan during World War II

“Harry (President Harry
Truman) dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, my birthday, but they
didn’t surrender,” Jack continued. “So he dropped another one on Nagasaki
on Aug. 9 and that did it. If he hadn’t done that, me and a lot more
Americans wouldn’t have gotten to come home. The way it turned out, we
were headed back home in just a few weeks.”

In reflecting on his Navy
days, Jack knows he and most of his mates were extremely fortunate. The
entire destroyer, a 376-foot-long vessel which contained 360 men, could have
been blown apart. He recalls that on May 25, 1945, a Japanese airplane
fired a 500-pound bomb “right into one of our torpedo tubes.”

“It hit the ammunition
magazine, so a lot of our stuff exploded, too. But it blew down instead
of blowing up, like you’d expect. It blew a hole in the bottom of the destroyer
that you could have driven a semi through. It also caught fire. We lost
23 men, all of them who were in the ammunition area.

“It was terrible, but it
could have been a whole lot worse. Our ship didn’t sink and we were able
to patch it up.

These 71 years later,
Carnahan believes the loss of lives and damage to the destroyer could have been
prevented. He said the Japanese plane had been spotted in the clouds and
the report was sent to the commanding officers. But instead of taking
immediate action, they hesitated and didn’t try to knock the craft out of the
skies before it delivered its payload.

While Jack’s Navy days
are memorable, he also has many other memories and stories to tell. He’s
a part of America’s “greatest generation” the one which grew up during the
Great Depression, preserved America’s freedom by winning WW II and then helped
make America the greatest nation in history.

Although Jack’s parents,
John and Mabel, were living in Orella, located in Sioux County on the edge of
what became Toadstool Park, in 1920 when he was born, his arrival occurred in
nearby Ardmore, a village just across the state line into South Dakota.
That’s because Ardmore had a doctor.

Jack was third third
child in a family of seven.

He said his mother had an
80-acre homestead near Orella and his father had purchased two sections of
adjoining pastureland. His dad was the section foreman for the Burlington
Railroad that ran through Orella. The berg is still on some maps, but is
now a ghost town with a few dilapidated buildings.

“They say it was about a
tossup whether Harrison or Orella would be the Sioux County seat,” Jack said.
“We had the school, the post office, a hotel, a grocery store and a dance
hall, but I don’t think there was ever a church or a bar there.”

Jack said every day two
passenger trains ran each way through Orella. His two older brothers,
Ansel and Kenny, rode them to Crawford to attend high school. But after
completing grade school, Jack and his brother Bob, along with their cousin
Cecil Wasserburger, remained at the Orella school, which had a capable teacher,
and took courses supplied by both Harrison High and the University of Nebraska
to earn their diplomas.

Since their dad was a
full-time railroader, the Carnahan boys were kept busy ranching. Jack
recalls that in 1932 his dad bought a flock of sheep and the following summer
when he was 13, he was designated as the primary herder in the shadow of Sugar
Loaf, the area’s most prominent landmark, as the woolies grazed.

“There were so many
coyotes that even if you took time away from the sheep just to eat dinner you
might lose four or five lambs,” he said. “We finally got some 1080 poison from
the government to help control the coyotes. But one year we lost more than 100
lambs and had to quit raising sheep.”

The family’s holdings
expanded briefly during the mid-1930s when his dad bought 1,300 acres next to
Toadstool Park for a dollar an acre.

“We really didn’t have
the money to buy it and it was mostly badlands with not much grass, but the
depot agent, a guy named J.B. Jolly, owned it and wanted to sell it. He
convinced dad to take it off his hands,” Jack related. “The next year,
the government started buying land in the area and dad sold it for $2.25 an
acre. It seemed like we made a lot of money then, but we realized afterwards we
should have hung onto it.”

Similar land in that
region sold for $1,095 an acre in March 2016 to a Floridian who intends to hunt
fossils on it.

“When I was a kid, you
could find petrified turtles and turtle eggs every day of the week in the area
that became Toadstool Park,” Jack recalled.

The Carnahans expanded
their operation in 1942 when they bought 480 acres near Whitney. It included
120 irrigated acres where they raised hay to feed their cattle in the winters.

This time Jack was in
charge of the irrigation. He says it was harder than herding sheep. “I had a
shovel in my hand day and night. It was the hardest work in the world.”

But irrigating prepared
him well for his next venture. When his brother Dick graduated from
Crawford High School in 1944, Jack’s deferment expired and he was about to be
drafted. That’s when he joined the Navy. Boot camp at the Farragut Naval
Training Station in Idaho was a snap because he had been working so hard.

“I’d take two laps around
the camp while holding my rifle over my head in the mornings before the other
guys got there,” he said. “It felt good.”

When the war ended a few
days after the atomic bombs had been dropped, Jack had been a sailor only 15
months and didn’t have enough points to be discharged immediately. So he
remained on the destroyer as it went through the Panama Canal to Cuba and then
along the Atlantic Seaboard to New York City, where he and his mates were based
for several months.

The trip back to the U.S.
was an extra long one. The Japanese bomb had left the USS Stormes with
only one of its two propellers and its top speed from then on was just nine
knots, or about 10 miles an hour. It would normally go 50 miles an hour.

After the destroyer was
fully repaired in East Coast shipyards, Jack was aboard when it was taken on a
test run to Greenland. He received his discharge early in the summer of
1946 and returned to the home place to farm and ranch. He eventually purchased
the property.

Jack Carnahan a few years ago holding the photograph of "Riding the Ridge" ago when it went through the badlands in the Orella, SD area where he was born and raised.

By the time he arrived
home, his brothers were on their way to other careers.

Ansel, who also served in
the military during WW II, became a veterinarian and initially practiced in
Chadron before moving to Vermont, his wife’s home state; Kenny was a Chicago
and North Western Railroad engineer in Chadron and later at Belle Fourche,
S.D.; Bob became a surgeon who practiced in Casper; Dick bought a machine and
laid lots of asphalt in the area while living in Harrison; and Jim, the
youngest, became a railroader in Sheridan, Wyo., where he still lives.

The only girl, Dorothy, a
medical technologist, lives in Hilton Head, N.C.

In 1948, Jack married
Peggy Mittan of Chadron and they raised five children—Sandy, Bruce, Bev, Brian
and Brenda—while living on the Whitney place. For the next 35-plus years,
Jack and a few helpers, including the kids, trailed his 200-head cowherd by
horseback the 23 miles to and from the Orella pastures each spring and fall,

Following a lingering
illness, Peg died in 1979. Jack retired and moved to Chadron in 1985,
then sold the land a few years later, but he’s had other investments ever
since. He and former Chadron teacher Virginia Jones have been special
friends for more than three decades.

Jack is hale and hardy
and obviously enjoys living. His long and productive life is not a huge
surprise. His mother, Mabel, lived to be over 100 and amazed many by
annually participating in the CROP Walk from Crawford to Whitney when she was
in her 90s.

- End-

(Editor's Note: Thanks once again to good friend Con Marshall for sharing yet another terrific story about the interesting people, places and history of northwest Nebraska. For those of us who've known some of the Carnahan family members over the years, this was a great read! Thank you, Con.)

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

The short, soft-spoken former Army nurse was asked how she coped
with the harsh realities of working in an Army hospital in war-torn Europe
during World War II.

Marcella LeBeau - July 17, 2016

Without hesitation, Marcella LeBeau responded, “I didn’t have time to worry.I had work to do.There were patients to care for,
transfusions to be done, and there were buzz bombs overhead.I just didn’t have time.”

You could hear a pin drop as this 96-year-old veteran nurse
stood under the shade of a small tent outside the Fort Meade Museum at Sturgis,
South Dakota last weekend (7/17/16).

She shared stories of her experiences during
World War II, from the D-Day landings at Normandy to the historic “Battle of
the Bulge” that helped change the direction of the war.

Marcella Ryan LeBeau’s story began on the Cheyenne River
Reservation at Promise, South Dakota, where she was one of five children born to
Joseph and Florence Ryan.Her old hometown
of Promise – nestled along the banks of the Moreau River – is gone now,
inundated by the massive waters of Lake Oahe.

Her name belies the rich Lakota heritage of which she is so proud. Her mother was a
member of the Two Kettle Band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a
descendant of Rain in the Face, who fought at the Battle of the Little Big
Horn.Her great grandfather,
Joseph Four Bear, was a reluctant signatory to the infamous Fort Laramie Treaty
of 1868.Her father, a rancher, was
Irish.

Marcella’s Lakota name is Wigmunke Waste Win, which in
English means “Pretty Rainbow Woman.”

“Growing up we had no
electricity and had to haul water in.I remember my father had a big garden, and geese, horses, and other
animals.

“My mother died when I
was 10, and I was sent to the boarding school at the Old Cheyenne River Agency.It was a horrible experience.If you didn’t speak English, it was
terrible.Students would be beaten
– whipped – and there were instances of rape and attempted rape.It was very traumatic.”

She convinced her father that she and her siblings weren’t
getting a proper education, and they transferred to the St. Elizabeth Mission
School at nearby Wakpala.After
getting her diploma from St. Elizabeth’s, Marcella enrolled at St. Mary’s School of
Nursing in Pierre. She completed her studies there in three years, graduating in 1942.

“I sewed clothing for
my friend Marie Weaver, and pajamas for my brothers and sisters.We had come through a tough drought,
and I had the same pair of shoes for three years, binding them with tape to
hold the soles on.”

“When I graduated from
St. Mary’s, I had no uniform or shoes for the ceremony.I was fortunate that my father was able
to buy them for me.”

After working for a time at the Public Health Hospital at
Fort Thompson, Marcella took her first out-of-state job in Pontiac, Michigan.

“It paid $140 a month,
plus room and board.It seemed
like a lot of money.”

World events, however, were deteriorating, and the United
States was in the clutches of World War II.

“I was working in the
surgical ward in Pontiac, and we kept hearing radio announcements about the
need for Army nurses.”

Lieutenant Marcella Ryan - 1944

Shortly thereafter, Marcella and her friend Marie Weaver decided
to “see the world.”They were
among the 104,000 young nurses who were recruited by the American Red Cross to
become Army nurses and serve at Army hospitals at home and overseas. They enlisted in April 1943, hoping
they’d be able to serve together as brand new 2nd Lieutenants.

But Marie was assigned to go to Colorado, and Marcella was
sent to Torney General Hospital in Palm Springs, California for "training." It was the old El Mirador Hotel, which the Army had bought at the outbreak of the war and converted into a 1,600-bed general hospital. While undergoing no real military training, Lt. Ryan was issued her uniforms and was temporarily assigned to work in the psychiatric wards.

She then received orders to join
the 76th General Hospital unit in Boston and was soon on a troop train headed for Chicago
and then Boston, where she and others awaited their overseas assignments.Shortly thereafter, she found herself
aboard the troop transport USS George
Washington for the 14-day voyage to Liverpool, England.The United States was making
preparations for an invasion of Nazi-occupied France.

After arriving at Liverpool, nurses of the 76th General
Hospital were transported to the coastal community of Llandudno, Wales, where
the new arrivals underwent orientation to the European Theatre Operations and
preliminary professional evaluation. While there, medical personnel lived in hutted camps or were
billeted with families.After about a month, Lt. LeBeau, who had
lived with a family in a private home, was assigned to the medical facility at
Leominister, England, about 100 miles northwest of London.

There she worked in the psychiatric ward – but soon
submitted a request to be transferred to surgery.

In May 1944, their first patients began arriving in the
surgical ward.The work schedule
was somewhat routine.

Then came June 6, 1944 – D
Day.

“We were called to our
duty stations at 2:30 in the morning, and we began getting soldiers from D-Day.
We were pretty busy after that.”

The work continued at a hectic pace for days on end.By mid-August, the Allies
had secured Normandy and were on the march toward Nazi-occupied Paris.Lieutenant LeBeau and her unit were ordered to Southampton to
embark aboard boats headed for Normandy.

Channel storms kept the vessels carrying the Army nurses and
other troops at bay for three days on their crossing to the continent. As they finally approached the shore,
they wrestled their way down a rope ladder to a landing barge for the final leg
of the journey to the beach.

LeBeau had been suffering from a severe toothache and
immediately went to a field hospital – literally in a cow pasture – for a root
canal.Nurse LeBeau became patient
LeBeau, but not for long.She
was soon back on the job.

Although much of Normandy had been secured, it was
definitely a war zone.

“There were still land
mines and many German tanks that had been knocked out in the invasion,” she
remembered.

On August 25th, the Allies liberated Paris from German
control, and Lt. LeBeau and her colleagues were on their way the French
capital.The tide was turning for
the Allies as they began pushing German troops back toward their homeland. LeBeau
was temporarily assigned to the 108th General Hospital in Paris,
where they treated Allied casualties as well as German prisoners of war.

A few weeks later, Allied forces regained the Belgian cities
of Antwerp and Liege. LeBeau’s 76th General Hospital was ordered northward to the 1,000-bed hospital at Liege,
where they would handle casualties from France and other war zones along front.

While the Allies seemed to be gaining the upper hand against
the German army, things changed quickly.

On December 16, 1945, the Germans launched a massive surprise
counter-offensive through the rugged Ardennes forest in an effort to reach
Antwerp and disrupt Allied supply shipments.The Allies had considered the Ardennes impenetrable
and had left the area largely undefended.Liege was between the front line and Antwerp.For the U.S. Army, it would be bloodiest battle of World War
II – the “Battle of the Bulge.” “

“At one point we were
told to get packed and be ready for evacuation,” LeBeau remembered.

“It
never happened.I was young and
didn’t know what war was.It was
probably a saving grace.”

With more than 600,000 Americans engaged in the fighting,
casualties were high – more than 89,000, including 19,000 deaths.Many of the wounded were sent to Liege
for surgery and hospitalization.

Marcella and friend Bette Rohay

“We had a wooden
building that had been built for surgery.I worked closely with two corpsmen and one nurse,” LeBeau recalled. The city remained a target of intense
aerial bombardment by German V1 and V2 “buzz bombs.” Some medical units and
hospitals in the Liege area suffered casualties and damage not only from
V-weapons, but also from conventional bombing and long-range artillery
fire.

Army reports indicated the city was blasted with as many as
1,500 such devices. Hardest hit among the medical facilities was Lt. LeBeau’s
76th General Hospital unit on January 8, 1944.The Army reported 24 patients and staff
killed, another 20 injured, plus buildings and equipment that were damaged.
Additional documents revealed that
the 76th General Hospital staff “cared for their own
casualties, cleared away rubble, and kept on working.”

“There were body limbs all over,” LeBeau
remembered.“The buzz bombs continued night and day, but our work did not stop, as
we cared for wounded troops and gave blood transfusions.We were blessed with plenty of blood
and penicillin, which was relatively new at the time and had to be administered
every four hours.”

“I remember one of our
hospital corpsmen, named Coffee, was deathly afraid of the buzz bombs and his
situation became increasingly apparent, as he was going without sleep.As we ate lunch together one day, I
gave him a sleeping pill and had another corpsman put him to bed.He was finally able to get some
sleep.I think if I hadn’t done
that, he would have gone berserk.”

There was little time to relax.While there was an Officer’s Club in Liege, Marcella and
many other nurses never went there, because they felt there was too much drinking.They often found respite by visiting
the home of a Belgian woman who worked at the hospital laundry.She would invite them for tea and
tarts, real treats in a time of severe food rationing.

The ravages of war leave behind many casualties.For Lt. LeBeau, one incident remains
vivid in her memory.

“It was an American
soldier who had been a prisoner of war and was rescued.He was so gaunt.Skin stretched over his
bones.He was so emaciated.Your first inclination was to feed him,
but of course, we couldn’t immediately do that.His eyes. A
vacant stare. I can’t forget that
look.”

1st Lt. Marcella Ryan LeBeau's uniform

But even in the harshness of war, there were moments of
humor, and Mrs. LeBeau reflected on an incident at the Army hospital in Liege
when a red-headed Dutch patient approached the pretty young Army nurse.

“American soldiers all
have pin-up girls to help take their minds off the war,” he boldly
proclaimed to LeBeau while handing her a photograph of himself.

“Now I want to be your
pin-up boy!”

The photo was promptly tacked up on the bulletin board.

Within ten days of the German assault on the Ardennes, Adolf
Hitler ordered his troops to halt their advance, stifled by dogged Allied
resistance.By early February
1945, the Allies had retaken all the territory they had lost.The “Battle of the Bulge” was over, and
the war was nearing its end. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, and the Germans surrendered unconditionally a week later.The war was over.

Lieutenant LeBeau completed about one year at the
hospital in Liege and then was on her way home. She was discharged at Des Moines, Iowa in February 1946.

She was awarded three bronze stars – for the Rhineland, Northern France, and the Battle of the
Bulge.The government of Belgium
also presented her and others of their unit with special medals. Those, however, would not be the end of many special
awards for the girl from Promise, South Dakota.

As she contemplated returning to South Dakota, there was
little to attract her.Her father
had fallen ill and was living in the “Old Soldiers Home” in Hot Springs.So she went to Chicago and moved in
with her younger sister, Johanna, who was in the Army Nurse Cadet Corps at St.
Luke’s Hospital.Marcella
took a job as a private duty nurse. But in the next year or so, went to work
for a hospital in Rapid City.

The following year, on September 4, 1947, Marcella Ryan married Navy veteran
Gilbert LeBeau at Moreau, South Dakota.Both hailed from the Promise area.“Gib” was a Gunner’s Mate Petty Officer and served at Pearl Harbor and later aboard two ships during the war.

The LeBeau’s had eight children.After they returned to the Cheyenne River Reservation,
Marcella was active in her children’s school activities and as a leader in
4-H.She also continued her
nursing work with the Indian Health Service at Eagle Butte, South Dakota, retiring
as Director of Nursing after 31 years of service.

But “retired” may
not be the best description of this much-honored Lakota elder.

She and a granddaughter established a sewing business, and
Marcella also became involved in gardening, care giving, and continued to share
her experiences from many years in nursing.She became a member of the tribal council – one of just two
women elected to the body, and she also served as secretary for the Wounded
Knee Survivor’s Organization.As a
long-time nurse, she was also instrumental in getting smoking banned from
tribal offices.

Ties to her Lakota culture run deep for Marcella.In 1999, after she and her son,
Richard, had worked many years to recover a Lakota Ghost Dance shirt from a
museum in Scotland, it was finally returned to South Dakota.The shirt had been wore by a Lakota
warrior who died at the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.

As an Army officer and nurse, Marcella managed to rise above
the cultural and economic barriers that faced her as a young Lakota woman in
the mid-20th century.She served her country honorably, and it was no ordinary “tour of duty.”

But sometimes, people forget.Society forgets.So it is good to remember.

Her many friends and colleagues from the 76th General Hospital at Liege, Belgium, held reunions numerous times over the years to recall their experiences and renew friendships. The gatherings took place in Des Moines, Iowa, and were, she said "great therapy." Mrs. LeBeau and her friend Esther Westvelt Pierce made the trip every summer they were held. Alas, the once robust group of Army medical personnel has dwindled and the reunions are no more.

Marcella LeBeau in Washington, DC

The French remembered First Lieutenant Marcella Ryan LeBeau. She was among 100 World War II
American veterans flown to Washington, D.C. in 2004 and awarded France’s highest
civilian award, the French Legion of Honor (Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur)
at the French Embassy. It was the
60th anniversary of D-Day, and the honored veterans were then flown to France to
visit Paris – and later to tour the beaches of Normandy.

When she was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in
2006, Mrs. LeBeau was recognized not only for her Army achievements, but also for
her 31 years of dedication to nursing. A founding member of the North American Indian Women’s
Association nearly a half century ago, Marcella remains a mentor and confidante
for many young Lakota women – and her inspiring story reaches across
generations and cultures.

More than 60 years after her service in the Army, Marcella
told a researcher from the University of Arizona that she was never subjected
to any discrimination or harassment while in the military.But that was not the case after the war
when she returned to South Dakota.She remembered seeing signs in Rapid City that said, “No Indians or dogs
allowed.”

“I couldn’t buy
vanilla extract in a grocery store, or rubbing alcohol in a drug store, because
I was Native American.Then in
1955, I think, the laws were changed, but to me, a law doesn’t change the
hearts of men.”

Of her many experiences during World War II and in her long
nursing career that followed, Marcella particularly remembers and often shares
one story – about Eugene Roubideaux from the Rosebud Reservation in South
Dakota.

“I was working one
night in a Shock Ward – like an Intensive Care Unit – and was asked to see this
patient.He had lost both legs,
and they were afraid that he might try to commit suicide.So I went to see him.His name was Eugene Roubideaux.I took him newspapers from home,
visited with him, and offered to write letters home for him, but he didn’t want
to contact anyone.

“

I went over to see
him often…and then, one day, he was gone.

“After the war, I came
back to the United States.For 40
years I looked for him.Every
place I’d go to a nurse’s meeting, I’d ask if anyone knew Eugene Roubideaux,
but I could never find him.

“Then one day I met a
young lady who came to our hospital to introduce us to a new form to be used at
the hospital.

“The next morning I
got this call, and she said ‘This is Ann Lafferty.Do you known Eugene Roubideaux?’

“I said ‘yes, I do.’”

“’He was my father,’
she said.”

It was an emotional moment for Marcella, who was overcome by
the news.

Mrs. Rafferty gave Marcella her father’s address and phone
number and told her that he had divorced, remarried, and raised a large family.
He was living in Yankton.

“I couldn’t call him
right away, but eventually I did.

“I asked if he
remembered the nurse who stood at his bed in Liege, Belgium?”

“I’ll never forget,”
he responded.

For Marcella, who shared the story with the Veteran’s
History Project, it was an emotional moment.

“Some time later,”
said Marcella, “we were able to invite
him and his family to Eagle Butte for an honor dinner.”

It is not surprising that Marcella Ryan LeBeau wanted to
honor another veteran.Nor that
she continues to be active in community and tribal activities.That she remains a steadfast advocate
for her family and her people.

More than 16 million men and women served in the military
during World War II.They are
dying at a rate of about 492 veterans each day.That means our nation will likely loose almost all of them within
the next decade.

How fortunate we were to have had this “Greatest Generation” as
our elders, our family, our friends, and members of our community – defending and
nurturing us during one of the most difficult times in American history.

For many of these veterans, like Lieutenant Marcella Ryan
LeBeau, the challenges they faced and their achievements, were particularly
significant.

And a handful of them, like Marcella, continue to make
meaningful contributions to their families and communities.